How is Color blindness diagnosed?

A retina is basically made up of photoreceptors known as cones and rods.

Rods are present in the periphery of our retina and they are involved in night vision.

On the other hand, the cones are located in the center of the retina and the cones help us to perceive color the in daytime.

The cones are responsive to different wavelengths of light. The reason is that they are genetically coded in the type and amount of pigmentation.

The X chromosome holds the genes that generate the pigments in the cones that are required to discriminate color.

In case, if the genes that code the cones intensity of pigment are coded wrongly then it means that the pigments are wrong.

This is the reason of color blindness or color deficiency.

Reason of Color Blindness

According to the study it is found that males are suffering from color blindness on a larger scale as compare to females.

The poor cone growth will lead to the poor acuity of color, particularly with the three main colors i.e. green, red and blue.

Usually, in protanopia, there is a lack of red photo receptors and red looks like black.

There is also a reduced sensitivity of yellow and orange.

The deuteranopsia is the deficiency of green receptors.

This problem is rare but can occur in people of all age group. Tritanopia is another problem.

This problem occurs due to the deficiency of blue receptors. Some other reasons of color blindness are age related disorders such as diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, trauma, and the deficiency of vitamin A.

Cataracts and Glaucoma can also have an effect on color sensitivity.

Different barbiturates, high blood pressure medications and antibiotics can also affect the color perception.

How to diagnose the problem?

The inherited color vision insufficiency is generally diagnosed in early childhood with the use of easy screening tests.

Different tests like Ishihara Color Plates and The Hardy-Rand-Rittler, commonly known as H-R-R are used to evaluate the degree and type of color insufficiency.

In both of the tests, the individual is asked to classify the colored shapes or numbers that lie in a mixture of dots and differ in strength and color.

The physicians distinguish and classify the insufficiency based on the person’s responses.

Always keep this in your mind that hereditary color vision deficiency cannot be cured or treated.

Different types of measures can be taken in order to deal with this problem.

Some of the people develop their own structure of recognizing different colors by their location or brightness, such as the points of yellow, green and red in a traffic light.

The colored lenses and specialized glasses are also available in the market which helps in normalize colors.

Get Vision to assure that you will not have to miss the words and figures because of your colorblindness issue.

It will help you manage the screen according to the colors that you can see clearly.

Cambridge color test

Cambridge color test is also one of the common types of test which is taken in order to diagnose color blindness.

This test is like Ishihara color test, but it’s taken on a computer screen.

In this test, the patient is asked to pick out the letter C from different painted backgrounds.

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